Life was funny. Not so long ago, my measure of a rockin’ birthday was the strength of the hangover I suffered the nextday. I’d have laughed at the suggestion of a quiet night with homemade treats and a boardgame I hadn’t played in decades.
But this had been a good day. A great day. To wish for anything more would be greedy.
Yet somehow…I wanted more.
CHAPTER 19
COOPER
The summer months were popular in my house.
I didn’t have to shuttle Ivy and Chase to Fallbrook every day…at all. Not even for camp. This year they’d opted to do day camp with Reg’s kids, where their daily activities included swimming lessons and boating at the lake, dance and tennis at the rec center, and hockey camp for both of them in Elmwood. And of course, flag football.
Their schedule was better for me than Sarah by a long shot. I was surprised she hadn’t pushed back and insisted on doing some activities in Fallbrook. But then I realized there might be a motive behind her silence, and I wasn’t ready to unpack that just yet.
If I ignored the possible move she hadn’t mentioned in months and the niggling feeling that it wasn’t like my ex to go out of her way to appease me, I could admit that this summer was shaping up to be one of the best I’d personally had in years.
The kids were busy and happy, and I was in a rare zone where my work and home life seemed perfectly balanced. I had Silas to thank for that.
Everyone knew that we were friends by now and in the summer months when the whole town was in the streets, playingtag and football and organizing block parties, it was easy to blend in as buddies.
Well, maybe we hadn’t fooled everyone.
I’d thought it was a little strange the first time Reg suggested that I invite my neighbor to his place for a barbecue. But Reg was a friendly guy, and Silas was coaching his kids too.
And Aunt Rhona and Uncle Harry had been known to have total strangers over, so dinner at their house with Silas was…well, nice. Really nice.
Should I have been concerned that the invitation came while Ivy and Chase were at their mom’s? Maybe. But we went anyway.
“Oh, my God! Check out that hair. You’re like Mr. Grunge Lumberjack Man,” Silas hooted, pointing at the collage of family photos that covered every square inch of my aunt and uncle’s family room.
“He was in a band that year, weren’t you, Coop?” Aunt Rhona said. “Axe Life or Sex Life or?—”
“Axin’ It,” I supplied in an appropriately mortified tone. “That lasted two months.”
Silas snorted. “What happened?”
My aunt beat me to it. “They were awful. Not one of them could play an instrument. Nails down a chalkboard, I tell you. Cooper slashing away at that poor guitar was almost as bad as Reg pounding on the drums like that furry fellow from the Muppets. Reg had more hair back then. See?”
She showed a high school pic of Reg and me sitting side by side in our football uniforms, legs touching and grinning like madmen. And another of Reg resting his head on my shoulder, drum sticks in hand while I posed with a borrowed guitar.
Silas hummed. “You guys were always tight.”
“They certainly were,” Aunt Rhona agreed, steering him toward a wall of embarrassing baby photos of my sister and me. “Those two were so precious. Harry and I couldn’t have childrenof our own, but we got to spoil Coop and Elle and send them home jacked up on sugar whenever they visited. That was before they moved in.”
“You lived here? In this house?” Silas asked.
“After their dad passed away. It was best for everyone at the time, though I don’t think Coop’s sister, Elle, agreed.” Aunt Rhona snickered. “She missed her friends in Fallbrook. But Coop had Reg. His folks lived right next door. Still do. Rose and Clark. Rose and I used to smoke pot at the lake with those cute Canadian boys who moved into town our senior year. Remember that, Harry?”
“That was me! I was the cute Canadian boy,” he yelled from the kitchen.
Aunt Rhona winked. “I knew that.”
Poor Silas had been subjected to a heap of family lore to go with his pot roast. My aunt and uncle had talked about their hippie days, hitchhiking clear across the country. They’d lived in California, Oregon, Washington, Saskatchewan, Nova Scotia, Maine, and a few other places they couldn’t remember.
“We wanted to do it all, see it all, but…it was nice to be home for Coop and Elle,” Harry said. “Family matters, eh?”
Later that night, Silas and I sat on Adirondack chairs in front of the fire pit at his friend’s house, sipping beers and listening to the forest animals chatter and the crackle of wood. He loved Rhona and Harry and their stories of their endless adventures.
